Ken Cheetham

Ken Cheetham is an animal residing on a tiny planet hurtling through space.
He has existed for the last 57 of the universe's several billion years.
Ken's current goals are to work to increase corporate profits for
another decade or two, see the important movies on the weekends, and then
be dead forever.

For wonderful hiking right on the edge of town, you may want to check out the open space in Strawberry Canyon, Hamilton Gulch, and Claremont Canyon in Oakland on the East side of Berkeley. The mouth of Strawberry Canyon is only a little over a mile east of downtown Berkeley, within walking distance of BART. Here's my shorter sequence of some favorite photos, a longer sequence, and even a ridiculously complete sequence of many of the canyon photos that I've kept.

This Mature Ecosystem is Threatened by a Major UC Berkeley / FEMA Tree Cut

Six Myths About Climate Change that Liberals Rarely QuestionMusic! Here are a few songs of mine.
"Under" is a straightahead fun funky number. Fnoo is a jazzy classicalish work in a fast three. Boof is rude on the outside but somewhat mellow in the middle. Wake Up is a song for waking up to gradually in the morning. Urnk is hard-hitting and then spacy. The first two are new recordings of very old songs. The other three are older recordings of less old songs, with somewhat lower-quality mixes.

At the moment these recordings are free for any not-for-profit use, though they may not always be. The songs and recordings are copyright Ken Cheetham.
Video! Here's my video of the Occupy Oakland demonstration at the Port of Oakland on Wednesday, November 2, 2011.

The middle of the video demonstrates the human microphone being used to pass instructions back through the huge crowd, one block at a time. The end features a splendid drumming & chanting happening back in downtown Oakland.
Footage of the Creative 2003 Bay Area Protest of the War on Iraq

The following six videos cover some large protest demonstrations in San Francisco and Oakland, California, shortly before and just after the March 2003 US invasion of Iraq. Parts 1 through 3 are planned permitted marches before the invasion, while parts 4 through 6 are impromptu protest just after the invasion, on Friday and Saturday, March 21 and 22, 2003. Part 4 covers a mass arrest for walking in the street without a permit. Parts 5 and 6 feature interesting interplay with police attempting to keep the protesters out of the streets. This is raw video heavily edited down into short clips to keep it moving along. The footage focuses on drumming and other music in the streets.

One product makes you stylish
And one product makes you score
But the ones that we keep buying
Quickly turn into a bore
Go ask Darwin
Why we thirst for
More
And if you go chasing status
Well you know you're going to fail
Cause a cigar-smoking corporate feller
Is holding a phantom grail
Call Darwin
Or send him email
When the men in the boardroom
Get up and tell you what you need
And you've just been watching television
And the Joneses look in the lead
Go ask Darwin
I think he'll know
When your genes only want to pass themselves on
After you've fallen sloppy dead
And they've tricked you into an endless rat race
Though like the Red Queen you can't get ahead
Remember
What your gut once said
Ease your dread
Ease your dread

Cheetham's rule-of-thumb on beer: If the beer has the word "red" in the name or has a red label, then it is probably quite good. If, on the other hand, it has the word "gold" or "golden" in the name or has a yellow label, then it probably sucks huge donkey noses.